Hello!

RaisaDee

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Greetings! I'm brand new to the world of chickens. My husband and I recently obtained our first chickens, and I have already found this site to be an amazing resource. We have three hens: Agatha, Bellina, and Camilla. We'd like to eventually get more, but as this is new to us, we're starting small. We've had them for about a month, and we just put them outside into their coop today.

Right now our biggest hurdle is getting our yellow lab used to them so that he doesn't freak out every time he goes in the backyard. Today was the first day that he was introduced to them (they were locked up in a room he doesn't have access to while they were in the house) and he just about broke my fingers keeping him from jumping at the wire. We've had him out there for short, supervised sessions, and then back into the house when he gets too rambunctious. Hopefully he'll get used to them soon!
 
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Welcome to BYC!

Love the names of your babies! Unfortunately, most dogs see chickens as dinner. Tons of threads in our emergency section on dogs injuring or killing their chickens. So be very very careful with your dog, no matter how sweet he is.

You might stop by these threads on training dogs around chickens and maybe you can glean some info on training your dog. Just remember, not all dogs respond to this training....

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/829562/training-teaching-a-dog-about-chickens

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/866449/can-you-train-a-dog-to-not-hurt-your-chickens

Enjoy this new adventure you are on and welcome to our flock!
 
Welcome from the Ocean State! I have a Siberian Huskey and it took her a while for the "curiosity" to die down. Now she just lays nearby and keeps guard.
 
Thanks so much for the info! We're being very careful with him, and I can already tell it's going to be a challenge to get him used to them. What we've done so far is allow him near the coop on a leash, so that we can pull him back if he tries to jump at the fencing. When he stands quietly near the coop, he gets praised effusively. When he gets too rambunctious, we bring him back inside to calm down. Rinse and repeat.

We don't intend to ever let our chickens be totally free range, for precisely this reason. I don't trust that they would ever be safe. So we have them in a run that we can move around the yard, and there will always be a chicken wire barrier between them and the dog. That being said, at the moment he is not allowed in the yard off-leash, until he shows that he can behave himself, and even then they will never be unsupervised.
 
Hello :frow and Welcome To BYC! Good luck with your flock, and the dog training!
 

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